The All-Time NBA Roster (Starters)

Before I start, I’d like to thank Patrick S J for piquing my interest in looking at the history in sports, and Erick Blasco for influencing the topic. Both did a terrific job with their pieces (“Erick Blasco’s All-Time NBA Team” and “The All-Time New York Yankees Line-Up, Coaching, Pitching, Bench and Media”) and I hope this works out as well.

Whenever you ask someone who the best players of all time are in any sport, you are bound to get a variety of answers, as many older fans tend to favor the players from their era, while younger fans favor today’s stars.

So I decided to challenge that thinking by creating an all-NBA roster using players from every decade. Here are the rules for my roster:

• Fill out a roster with two players from every decade starting with the 1950’s.
  
• Make sure all the starters have someone to back them up.

• No two players from the same decade are allowed in the starting line-up.

• Arrange the bench in the order they would come off the court.
  
• List two alternates who should be the best in the game from 2010-2019.
• Each should be adequate replacements on the roster.
  

Here are the starting five:

PG Bob Cousy (1950-1959)

The only way to really understand the impact Bob Cousy had on the game is to read what his former teammate Tommy Heinsohn says in Elliot Kalb’s book, Who’s Better, Who’s Best in Basketball, “If you think Magic Johnson could pass, if you think John Stockton could pass, multiply it by 10 and you have Bob Cousy.”

The big knock against him is that his stats aren’t that impressive (18.4 points per game, 7.5 assists), but there are several factors that explain Cousy’s numbers.

Cousy played in a time when assists were only awarded on a catch-and-shoot situation—so if the receiving player dribbled before shooting, it was not an assist.

Another important factor is that the shot-clock wasn’t around in Cousy’s time so the game was much slower, and he had no incentives to get assists.

In the 1950s and 1960s, both guards brought up the ball, as the point guard position wasn’t nearly as specialized as it is now. This explains why Cousy was responsible for fewer than 40 percent of the team’s, assists compared to Chris Paul, this year’s assist leader, and John Stockton in his prime. Both had over 50 percent of the assists for their team.

Assists didn’t carry near as much weight as they do now, because nobody kept track of the all-time assists leader, and it wasn’t a contract incentive. Cousy still won six championships with the Celtics as the top assist leader in the league for eight years, and was the No. 2 scorer on his team.

With the way the league is now, I have little doubt that Cousy would probably average 15 assists per game, which is why he has to be the best point guard ever to play the game—or at least No. 2 behind Magic Johnson.

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